Location: Denver, Colorado

Summary:

My wife cosigned on a car for a friend in July. (I know this was a terrible decision to make but that's besides the point) Since July this person has put 30k miles on the car and they have not made a payment since October. We have continued making the payments so that my wife's credit is not ruined, but obviously this arrangement is untenable to us.

So since the middle of December we have been trying to get the car back from this person so that we can sell it to Carmax or whoever. The loan on the vehicle is around $30k and it's only worth about $25k. We are fortunate to have the means to pay the difference and just end this situation, but clearly in order to do this we need physical possession of the vehicle.

The other party has been lying to us, dodging us, just generally being a slimeball and we are at our wit's end. I honestly cannot believe their actions but they seem to think that we should just pay for the entire car for them. At this point we would be happy to eat ~$5k and be done with this, but paying the entire $30k for this car is absurd to me.

One thing we would like to do is report the car as stolen so we can get it back and sell it. I am concerned we may run into trouble doing this as the person in possession of the vehicle is technically also an owner.

Questions:

Can we report the car stolen given these facts?

If we cannot report stolen, is there any legal mechanism to force the other party to cooperate?

The other part has no money and we are not even interested in trying to force any money out of him. We just want to get out of this situation for $5k instead of $30k.

Thank you, and please let me know if there are any details that I can clear up.